On Thursday the National Labor Relations Board handed down one of the biggest labor decisions of the Obama administration, ruling a contractor is equally responsible for labor issues committed by its subcontractors.Read the rest of entry »

We received an alert from a member with regard to an issue with the Town of North Hempstead. The town was enforcing mandatory apprenticeship graduation rates as a pre-qualification in its bid specifications. ABC has always supported the use of apprentices on construction projects. Indeed, they are our future
construction leaders. Unfortunately, by exceeding their authority, mandating graduation rates was reducing competition on a public works job and excluding ABC members from bidding on the project.Read the rest of entry »

The more research we did on this issue for our members, the more frustrated we became. In fact, it came to a point where our staff was actually submitting Freedom of Information Act requests to find out more information on the bidding, who was getting the work that was being done, etc. These requests for information have gone unanswered.
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Mayor De Blasio and his team, and all government units, need not look hard to discover the numerous issues that can result from PLA’s. One of the more notable PLA’s most in the Northeast will remember: The Big Dig in neighboring Boston. Originally estimated as a $2.8 billion dollar project, it ended up costing tax payers over $22 billion dollars.Read the rest of entry »

Mayor Bill de Blasio is right to make affordable housing an integral component of his policy agenda. His ambitious goal of creating 80,000 affordable housing units and preserving another 120,000 is laudable. But he faces major obstacles, not the least of which is incentivizing developers to build the units.
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Former New York City Mayor and billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg made some comments earlier this year that raised some eyebrows. He suggested that going to trade school to be a plumber was likely a better economic choice than going to college to receive an undergraduate degree. In fact, he actually went a step further and said that for the average person, becoming a plumber is probably a better deal than going to Harvard.
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While there are numerous upsides, there is at least one potential pitfall on this project: As has become fairly standard with SUNY construction projects, there is a rumored study being done to determine the feasibility of a Project Labor Agreement or PLA.
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Associated Builders and Contractors, Empire State is the voice of the merit shop in the New York construction industry. We believe the merit shop movement is a movement for the betterment of the individual... the construction industry... and the nation..